Tag Archives: shutters

We had been alerted by our friend Peter in the morning to a violent storm heading our way. Taking his good advice, we tucked all the garden furniture away safely in the garage and waited for the onslaught. By lunchtime it was really raining cats and dogs and the wind was whipping up.

Here it comes, we thought…..wrongly.

The winds we had in the morning were nothing compared to what was to come.

We closed all the shutters by 6.30, lit a fire and made sure all the hatches were suitably battened down. And by 8pm it hit us. A wind so fierce it seriously felt like the roof was going to lift off and the windows would be blown in. It was battering the shutters and in our bedroom we could still feel the breeze coming through. (Note to self: replacement windows required soon!)

There is a wire hanging loose from a pole outside next-door’s house which I am sure was sparking like a live electricity cable – very scary.

The lights were flickering and the power went off briefly. Checking Twitter [here] I could see many of our friends across the country starting to experience the same conditions. Thankfully no-one seemed to be in any danger.

The worst part of the evening came when the wind was so strong it was blowing the smoke from the fire back into the room. This really freaked us all out. I quickly grabbed the remaining log from the fire and threw it outside, where it fizzled away harmlessly in the angry wind. Thankfully this stopped the smoke and we could all start to breathe again!

Eventually we decided we may as well go to bed. All the kids were tucked up watching films in bed and so we tucked ourselves in too, expecting a rather disturbed night. But as it turned out we slept pretty well (well, I did,so was blissfully unaware of anyone else’s problems🙂 )

In the morning I walked the perimeter of the house, checking for damage and, rather surprisingly, there was none to speak of. The satelite dish had clearly been blown a little out of alignment as we were unable to get anything at all on the TV (panic!!). A quick trip up the ladder this afternoon soon fixed that. But, as expected, the trampoline did not fare too well. As it did the last time, the wind managed to lift it up and flip it over several times, dumping it unceremoniously upside-down on the field. This just goes to show how strong the wind is, as it normally takes 3 of us to just shuffle the trampoline along a little so we can cut the grass! I don’t know how many more tumbles it can take, but I’m hopeful that I can keep it going for a bit longer yet!

Tonight is, thankfully, a quieter night, with the wind still blowing and bitingly cold, but not at all as bad as last night. We hope that we won’t have a storm like that for a long time to come.